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Hey there fellow travelers. Mark here with Walters World. Today we're in Budapest, Hungary. And today we're going to talk about are some of the discussion topics you should have with your friends before you actually decide to travel with your friends. Because honestly, traveling with friends, I mean, I've been here to Budapest with friends multiple times. It's been a great experience for us. And you know, when you travel with friends, you know, it can bring you closer together. It can make you better friends. It can help really develop your friendship, make new memories together, just be a really fantastic experience. But also traveling together can destroy your friendship. And I know a lot of stories of people
that went traveling with friends and by the end of the trip they're not traveling with friends anymore. It's more like traveling with enemies. And I don't want that to happen. And the thing is there's some things you can talk about before you travel that can really clear up a lot of the kind of hiccups, a lot of the friction that ends up happening on trips. So I want to give you the kind of list of some of the questions you should ask and some of the topics you should talk about beforehand so you don't leave with a friend and come back with a friend of me. No. Now the first topic you should really talk about with your friends is actually the money question. I know sometimes talking
about money can be a little bit you know uncomfortable with friends. But the thing is you're going to be spending a week together, a weekend together, two weeks together, a month backpacking Southeast Asia together. You really need to have these discussions before you go. And money is probably the biggest sticking point, the biggest hiccup, the biggest like problem causer and friction creator kind of topic you have when you travel with other people. And but you have to realize is sometimes it comes down to like just how people travel. Like some people want to stay at the five-star hotels and eat the fanciest restaurants and reinvent the bordains every single moment in every single city. And other people they're like,
"Hey, you know what? I'm cool like getting you some water and lemons and putting some getting some sugar and having some free lemonade at the restaurant. I mean, you have the two extremes and also you have something in the middle. And one of the things you have with realiz is everybody could be in a very different financial situation because the financial situation your friend shows you might be different than their actual financial situation. So, it's good to have this topic and some of the money tops to talk about like just in general. One, the daily budget. How much can you spend? How much are you willing to spend? Is there anything you're willing to splurge on? Like that's a really good kind of topic to talk about. Also, accommodation. How
much are you willing to spend on that? Because like for me, I'm like accommodation is all about just having a place to sleep while I'm in a destination. It's not part of the trip itself. Whereas I have other friends that literally like no, I want to stay the fivestar hotel. I want to stay the best hotel possible because that's an experience for them. So that's another thing to talk about like, hey, how much we're going to spend on accommodation. Another thing looking at, hey, activity money. What are we going to be doing? How much you going to be spending on these things? Like if you go to London, you can spend a lot of money. If you're going to go to a West End show, you're
going to go out clubbing and things. Or you can spend a little bit of money and go to like the free museums like the British Museum or the National Gallery and then sprinkle in a few paid sites. But think about the activity thing. I mean, think about it. I've gone on guys trip where we go to NBA games, like basketball games, and that really boom, all of a sudden you're dropping a couple hundred bucks just to be in the stadium and to really enjoy the experience. So, that's something you got to talk about. Also, another really big one, probably the one where you get the most frustration with the money kind of thing, is talk about how you're going to split the bill. Is it going to be I pay
dinner one night, you pay dinner another night, I pay lunch one day, you pay lunch the other day? Is it we're doing rounds when we're drinking? I mean, you need to have that conversation because if you have a friend that would literally buy five courses of meals and then say, "We're splitting it in half and you had like a salad." That's going to cause some real frustration. And that's one of those things that's why it's important to have that. And what's cool is there's apps like Splitwise and other apps out there that'll help you like split the bills and everything and you can transfer the money and do all those things. So that can be helpful just to eliminate those kind of things.
Oh, and that split the bill thing that goes into my video on who you shouldn't travel with. I would recommend watching that after this video. Okay. Now, the second discussion topic you should probably go into with your friends is um what do you want to do on the trip? I mean, what is your goal of the trip? Like I am a museum and culture guy and yes, let's eat food, but local food at a good price. I have other friends, they're all about, no, no, I want to sleep in and I want to hit the pool and just drink all day long. Or your friends said, I'm all about the activities. I want to get up and I want to play golf and then I want to go hit the bar and then maybe like see a show in the
evening. I It's really important to know the goals that people have cuz those conflicting goals, just like at work, you have people with conflicting goals, it can cause friction. So, it's a good idea to have that talk. And just cuz you have different goals doesn't mean you don't travel together. It's just something you want to know. So if you have a friend who wants to play golf, you can let them play golf and then I'll go see a museum they don't want to see. Because I have friends of mine that literally know that I don't play golf. Therefore, they don't invite me on the golf trip. And I'm totally okay with that because I couldn't do 5 days in Florida with 5 days of golfing. I would
go crazy. And that's okay. We're still friends. My buddy Jason and I, we're still friends even though we haven't gone on a golf trip together. Now, the next question we need to talk about is um are you sharing a room? Or maybe more importantly, are you sharing a bathroom? Because sometimes people have a lot of stuff or sometimes people just need a little extra space and when you're traveling with people and you're adult and they're adult, you're used to your lifestyle. Maybe you're a slob and when you go to the bathroom, it's like a baby elephant went in there, the water is everywhere. Or maybe you're a little bit more cleaner and tidier. Those things can really get people upset. Remember
back in the day when you had a roommate? Yeah. you have those little friction points. So, sometimes it's good to have that discussion. Hey, are we going to get our own rooms or do we get separate rooms? Or maybe if we can like stay together, what kind of accommodation options we want to have? Cuz also talking about the types of accommodation you're cool with. Is it hotels? Is it an Airbnb? Is it a B&B? Like these kind of discussions be really helpful so people have the right kind of accommodation that they like. Cuz honestly, sometimes I'm cooler with sharing space with friends of mine. other friends of mine.
I'm like, "Yo, dude. I know I snore, but you snore like, "Oh my god, you're going to wake the dead. I can't stay with you." These things are things you need to discuss. Now, next up on our list is um have the discussion about when do you wake up? I know this sounds silly like, "Oh, we're all adults. We all get up in the morning." No, we all get up in the morning to go to work. We don't all get up in the morning when we're on vacation. So, it's important to talk about it because I'm a culture person. I want to get out and go see the museums. I want to go see the city before it's packed with people. So, I'm up and out at like 7:30 every morning to go and see the city. Whereas have friends of mine,
they're like, "Dude, this is my vacation, man. I'm sleeping until noon and then we can go do stuff." So, if you do have friends and you're not like at the same wake time, maybe it's good to have a discussion on our next topic. Are we cool doing things separate from each other or do we have to do everything together? Cuz if you're cool doing things separate, that wake up time doesn't really matter because I'll go with my friends and they'll sleep in and then I'll go see sites. I'll go film a bunch of my videos and then I'll come back like, "Hey guys, let's go see this." And it's kind of like they're ready to like travel with me after lunch. Whereas before I have my time, but that's one of those things. Are we
okay with doing different things like and not being together with it? Okay. So, I know for example, when I travel with my parents, my mom loves to shop. I can go for a little while for the shopping. So, I do some things, but what we'll do is like, "Okay, mom, you're going to go shopping. I'm going to go film for a little bit." And so, let's meet back in 2 hours. Okay. So, she does her thing, I do my thing, and we're not upset. I don't get a resentful passive aggressive mother thing. Oh, you couldn't go shopping with your poor dear mother. No, she knows I have my own thing, and she has her own thing, and we're cool with doing separate things.
Okay? Now, I know some people like, "No, it's a group trip. It's a buddy trip. We have to do everything together." Well, if you're going to do that, then make sure you're having a discussion of what's really important for everybody. Okay? What are those? Like, I have to do this kind of things. Like, I'm here in Prague. I have to go to the thermal bass, okay? and I have to go up the hill the castle home and see the church up there and the fisherman's fashion like that's non-starters we have to do it that's one of those things have those things kind of talk through and then what you can do is like okay then let's decide well you want to see the museum of terror here and I want to do this so we'll go over to pesh and we'll
do the museum of terror in the morning and then we'll go up to the castle in the afternoon have that kind of like hey things we can all do and we all can kind of share in the time that's going to be really helpful now another thing I think we need to discuss this is more of a logistics thing is who is keeping track of the documents like who is making the reservations, who is keeping the reservation information, who is booking the tours, who is getting the tickets. Like you have to have somebody that's the point person, especially if it's a guy's trip or a g's trip or a friend's trip or a friend's giving vacation kind of thing. You have to have someone that does everything together.
So someone needs to be that kind of document collector, the secretary of the trip. Is it fun? No, not all the time. But it's a good idea to have one person that all the tour companies call, all the hotels have the contact information for all through there. So they have that. Okay. So it's a good idea to have someone kind of leading the group or leading the blinds sometimes to make it a better experience. And then there's one of my other favorite questions to ask and this is a good one to talk about anyway with anybody cuz it's always a fun topic. The food and drink question. Now, there's the food and drink question in terms of, hey, are you cool with just having local food when we're there? Or
do you just want to go to the highly ranked restaurants, you know, or are you all about eating at, you know, restaurants every meal, or are you okay with doing kiosk? Are we going to eat in our apartment? What's the overall plan with the food and drink? Because again, this is kind of like an offshoot of the goals and money question, right? How much you going to spend on the food, where we're going to go? Cuz like for me, I want to have the local food everywhere I can. Unless I'm there for like a week, then I'm cool with kind of going off and having some pasta sometime or having something else sometime. But if I'm here in Budapest for a 3-day weekend, I want to eat the chicken
papadishka. I want to have the goulash. I want to have the local food when I'm here. The fish stew, like the fish soup, it's just really good. And so to have that conversation, because you have someone that's dead set on, oh, I want to go to Anthony Bourdain's restaurant where he went when he was here. then maybe you need to have that discussion and know that hey this is a food thing that's important to me. I want to make sure we have it so then you don't miss out because one of the biggest things you want to discuss okay out there is just communication. You want to have open lines of communication when you're traveling because a lot of times that's where those hiccups come. That's where
that friction comes in is people aren't talking to each other. So that's why I want you to ask each other these questions. Whoever's going on a trip ask these questions so you are all on the same page. You may think, well, these are really difficult questions to talk about, Mark. I feel embarrassed talking about these things with my friends. Look, if you're embarrassed to ask these questions to your friends, you probably shouldn't travel with those friends anyway. All right? So, just something kind of think about because I really want everybody to be on the same page when they go travel. Now, you don't have to do the same thing. You don't have to be together all the time, but at least
if you communicated it, it's going to work out a lot better and help build your friendship and make your friendship stronger as opposed to causing division in your friendship. All right. So, what are some questions you have about traveling friends? And also, what are some of the horror stories or some of the great stories you have travel with friends so other people can learn from your mistakes and successes to have a better buddy trip? Anyway, I wish you all the best. I'll say bye from here in Budapest.
